• Home
  • About the Ninja Marmoset….
  • Ninja Theatre
  • My life in Radio
  • The Marmoset on TV
  • The Movie Marmoset
  • Script consultancy & other monkey business
  • Monkey Pictures
  • Contact

NinjaMarmoset

~ rants & reflections of Martin Jameson, writer, director & grizzled media gunslinger.

NinjaMarmoset

Category Archives: Politics

Who Wants To Be A Billionaire?

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Economics, General Election 2019, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Politics, Taxation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

JK Rowling, John McDonnell, Laura Parker, Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Billionaires. Is it inherently wrong to have that much money? Is it ‘obscene’ (as John McDonnell said today)? Should we get rid of billionaires as some pro-Corbyn commentators (notably Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle on the Emma Barnett show) have observed in recent weeks? Or simply make it impossible to have more than a billion pounds in the uk?

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 16.00.38

No one contributed more to the popular perception of wealth than German cartoonist George Grosz

Ok, so I doubt anyone reading this would disagree that the increase in economic inequality not just in the UK, but globally, is a massive problem. But is the answer to it (is the answer to anything?) to start a populist vendetta against a hundred and fifty people whose wealth exceeds what is essentially a random number, picked out of the air because it’s eye catching and easy to remember? I’m not pleading their corner – I’m simply asking the question.

Why do we have billionaires? Russell-Moyle believes that the mere existence of billionaires creates poverty. I watched Laura Parker from Momentum expounding on BBC2’s Politics Live the other day that the only possible way a person could accrue a billion pounds is by aggressive tax avoidance, exploitation and shabby employment practices.

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 15.51.23

Momentum’s Laura Parker believes all billionaires to be inherently dodgy

I have no idea if all one hundred and fifty UK billionaires are guilty of this, although depending on where you research this JK Rowling’s earnings have topped a billion dollars and I would be surprised to learn that she was into any of those (although to be fair I don’t know that she isn’t, she could be up to all sorts of heathen and fiendish evil for all I know).

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 16.10.23

J K Rowling evil and heathen – depending on her net worth

I tentatively suggest that other factors are at play here, notably maths and technology. Quite simply there are more and more people on the planet, who want more and more stuff and modern technology means that it is easier and easier to sell that stuff… to all of them. Meanwhile inflation has meant that value per unit of currency has fallen over the decades.

Obscene? Or just a thing which is the inevitable result of population growth, and global consumerism and the reality that supply isn’t – nor will it ever be – globally collectivised.

Not right. Not wrong. Just maths and technology. And, for sure, probably a bit of tax avoidance and general skulduggery along the way in some instances.

So. If we did agree that having a billion pounds or more was obscene and that ultimately anyone who fell into that bracket simply wasn’t acceptable as a citizen in the UK how would we set about dealing with that?

For a start is a billion the right number? Are we talking about a billion pounds, a billion dollars, or a billion euros? Or is it just the idea of unimaginable wealth that we don’t like? If we are going to use words like ‘obscene’ where does obscenity start and acceptability finish? I mean why not £640million or £569,482.83p? Is £379m just mildly distasteful?

For it to make any kind of rational sense, you have to set a figure – just as we set a figure for top tax rates. Without a figure it’s meaningless and that figure has to be based on some kind of rationale other than blind resentment.

Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell has made a step towards this. He has made it clear that under a Labour administration no Chief exec in the public sector would be able to earn more than twenty times the National Living Wage. That’s somewhere around £350,000.

That’s a lot of cash to most of us, but small potatoes in CEO land.  And nowhere near a million, let alone a billion. Will it re-set the dial in terms of expectations? Possibly, but I doubt it. Will it stop the best people taking those jobs? I have literally no idea. My gut says that it would change the character of the type of person who applies for this kind of job, which could be a good thing… or not. I simply don’t know.

But there is an underlying message there from Mr McDonnell. We obviously want the best people to run the public sector but the acceptable remuneration for that is £350,000 per annum and no more. Implicit in this is that when you pursue more outside of the public sector you are effectively drinking and driving, you are using your mobile phone while doing 105 down the Motorway of life. Sort of like a premiership footballer, who earn, well, an obscene amount…!

Jeremy Corbyn Tweeted today: ‘Do you know what the establishment and the wealthy few are really afraid of? You.’

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 16.16.17

According to Wikipedia, depending on what sort of year I have, my annual earnings usually fall between the top one and two per cent on the UK earnings scale.  In a good year, there are less than half a million individuals who earn as much as I do. Although technically speaking, I am on a zero hours contract… of sorts.

I really need to know who ‘the wealthy few’ are? I mean, if I’m one of them and I’m reading Jeremy’s Tweet… then according to him I’m AFRAID OF MYSELF!!!

If I feed my profile into the computers at Labour HQ I fear they will short circuit like the Nomad robot in Star Trek!

Screenshot 2019-11-19 at 16.18.24

James T Kirk was always confounding AIs with unresolvable paradoxes

Let’s assume that all of this comes to pass, and having money – or even aspiring to great wealth and prosperity becomes a social no-no – and exceeding a billion squids (or whatever random number) is outlawed, what do we expect those people to do?  There are many devout Corbynistas who say they don’t care and good riddance if the billionaires decide to bugger off. But is that really what we want? Whilst outlawing wealth reduces inequality on paper, it only does so by cooking the books and slicing off the top of the differential graph.

We have to remember what our objectives are. If they are simply ideological – ie billionaires can fuck off – then, for sure, we can achieve that, but there’s no guarantee that in doing that we alleviate poverty at the bottom of the income scale. If our objective is to alleviate poverty and redistribute wealth, then we have to keep the wealth in the country precisely so that it can be redistributed.

You can’t redistribute nothing.

Doing that isn’t easy, and there are a multitude of economic and political approaches to achieving effective redistribution. We could argue the toss about that for months, but I do know for sure that ‘banning billionaires’ or any associated Us-and-Themery won’t get us a millimetre closer to achieving that goal. It’s just populism. Divisive. Pointless. No different at its heart that the mentality of Donald Trump whipping up the crowd at one of his rallies, with the sole objective of fermenting yet moire hate. Are those the values of the Labour Party now? I do hope not.

Please can we be smart about this and think about what we want to achieve and not who we resent, or who we can blame simply for existing. We know exactly where that kind of thinking leads.

In the meantime, I’m going to ensure that my earnings stay at £999,999.99p and not a penny more. That way all my Corbynista friends will go on loving me.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

First World Problems And My Pen Of Doom!

31 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Boris Johnson, Brexit, Civil War, Politics, Proroguing Parliament, Radio Drama, Satire, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

9/11, BBC, Civil Unrest, Politics

As visitors to this page will know, back in the heady, carefree days of 2017 I was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to write a five-part drama imagining the UK plunging into a bloody civil war some time sort of now-ish.

FWP WIDE LARGE FONT

This was to be no sci-fi melodrama but a tale of a Radio 4-style (i.e. middle-class) family’s battle for survival in the face of social and infrastructure collapse, set against a thoroughly researched and war-gamed political backstory.

I called it First World Problems. See what I did there?

To that end, I assembled an array of in-house BBC expertise, academics and parliamentary advisers and researchers – top people who mostly approached the task as a sort of dystopian parlour game, albeit often with a fair degree of wry amusement.

I sat down with one senior political analyst in the airy canteen at BBC Millbank. Well, for starters, we decided it would help if there was someone in the background of my scenario with the civil service in their sights. This was for the BBC so my hypothetical crisis had to work with governments of every hue. On the left that might be a fictional fixer in the image of, say, a Seamus Milne, and on the right it could be someone like, oh, I don’t know… Dominic Cummings?

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 11.06.31

We dared to imagine this man pulling the strings at Number Ten. Absurd!

How we laughed.

That was two years ago, and it seemed little more than a flight of darkly satirical fancy. When Cummings’s tenure was announced in July, my stomach turned.

Back in the canteen, my oracle postulated that with the civil service under attack, I’d now need an irreconcilable rift in the ruling superstructure to make my story credible. What if, following a chaotic Brexit, the infrastructure is cracking under the strain: Northern Ireland is subsumed into the Republic, Scotland bolts for the exit with an illegal IndyRef 2.0 resulting in a unilateral declaration of independence? There’s a scramble for control of the nukes at Faslane resulting in an armed and deadly conflagration. The border is closed, and Westminster goes nuts. MPs from all parties try to rein in the Executive, who in turn declares a state of emergency and prorogues Parliament, literally locking the MPs out of the building.

“I mean, I can’t really see it happening”, mused my adviser. Well, as Eric Morecambe might have said, “All the right notes, even if not necessarily in the right order”.

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 10.52.12

Eric Morecambe takes a look at my projections back in 2017

There have been rumbles about prorogation all summer, but commentator after commentator insisted it would never happen. It was staying safely fictional, until Wednesday morning.

Please God any resemblance to real events stops right here!

However, within minutes there was speculation that it would turbo charge Nicola Sturgeon’s drive for a second referendum. As to whether that would ever be granted, who knows? If Westminster tried to block it, it doesn’t feel out of the ball park to imagine an enraged Scotland doing it anyway. And if they did? There’s a creeping sense with the departure of Ruth Davidson that perhaps Mr Johnson (or Mr Cummings??) doesn’t really care if Scotland cuts loose. It would make it easier for the Tories to hold a majority at Westminster if they did, but a whiplash fracturing of the Union would, as in my drama, be dangerously destabilising.

My excluded fictional MPs form a Democratic Alliance, which sits in an alternative chamber across the city (today suggested by more than one political player in the real world).

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 15.20.53

An article in Friday’s Guardian

The country splits across the middle, with the big metropolitan authorities – the northern cities – siding with the rogue DA, while the south sticks with the Government. The Royal Family is forced to take sides. We all expect Elizabeth to stay neutral but who knows what Charles or William would do faced with future decisions, especially if the democratic mandate is unclear. This, in turn, begs the question of the military and the police. To whom are they now accountable? To whom are they loyal? What happens if they are split?

Other advisers warned of food and medicine shortages (now being prepared for), not to mention the fragility of the National Grid with multi-generator cascade failures (tick) as the fine balance of our energy infrastructure is disrupted.

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 14.45.24

When the power went, people ‘self evacuated’ and walked along the tracks.

Never mind lightning strikes, imagine if Scotland stopped exporting its power across the border to England. In my dystopian Tomorrow, they who control the National Grid Control Centre at Wokingham don’t just control our ability to keep the lights on, they control the internet, the mobile phone network, our ability to get petrol out of the pumps at filling stations, and the BACS system so integral to our cashless world. They control the country.

Far fetched? Ridiculous? Hysterical?

That’s what I thought in 2017, and just look at how much of that has either come true or is creeping nearer to the front of the queue ready to be ticked off the list. Even worse, look at how much we have normalised these things, how quickly we ‘get used’ to them. That, for me, is the most dangerous part of this. Only yesterday I was conversing with one of my former advisers who seemed content that apathy and inertia would stop any major civil unrest happening as if he hadn’t noticed that we are already careering down the slide with no idea what’s at the bottom. Like the old joke about how an optimist  is a person who falls out of a twenty storey window only to shout to an office worker on the tenth floor, ‘All right so far!’.

Just before I penned my radio epic I had delivered a first draft of a police procedural about a series of murders of gay men initially mistaken for terrorism but which ultimately turn out to be the work of a closeted muslim guy unable to resolve deep personal inner turmoil. I delivered it to my producer the day before the Orlando Club shootings about which there has been much similar (but as yet unproven) speculation. The BBC’s Editorial Policy team decreed I would have to rewrite the whole thing even though my script pre-dated reality. Last year I wrote another procedural about the murder of a man, thrown from the window of a Manchester Hotel. Pretty much exactly that happened almost exactly two months after I delivered the script. Although my hotel was absolutely fictional, the imaginative starting point had been the same building.

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 14.50.24

The police forensic tent outside Manchester’s Britannia Hotel in September 2018

Of course, these are simply unsettling coincidences.

Or are they?

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 16.04.52.png

The chicken or the egg?

When First World Problems finally aired in 2018 I was accused by organised Twitter trolls of trying to ferment unrest, but whilst the causal accusation is ridiculous, as with all dystopian fiction, if you can construct a possible narrative from your imagination, no matter how seemingly implausible, then that narrative can become reality. A few years back Prof Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw wrote a book about quantum physics called, ‘Everything That Can Happen Will Happen’, but in the realm of human behaviour I’m increasingly inclined to think this is true, quantum or no quantum. If a person, or a group of people, can behave in a certain way, no matter how idiotic, then sooner or later someone will. Just ask anyone who has ever had to design a safety system.

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 15.07.47

When I first saw this I thought it was a spoof…  It wasn’t. Although I have to admit a certain pride at being considered worthy of the BBC Death Cult Team.

A month after 9/11, two dozen Hollywood screenwriters were reputedly called in to the Pentagon hypothesise about ingenious and dastardly ways hostile agents could cause death and destruction across the US. I’m having difficulty verifying this, but if they weren’t, then perhaps they should have been. The dystopian and nihilistic imagination isn’t just the preserve of storytellers.

If we can imagine something bad coming, it’s worth taking our imaginations seriously – that’s what imagination is for after all – and then, hopefully, we can head our nightmares off at the pass before they become reality.

Having said that, my wife wants me to use my Pen Of Doom to write a drama about how the Amazon Rainforest is saved, or even better, some dialogue featuring a few winning lottery numbers.

And what about my fictional middle class Radio 4 family? Well you can still hear what happens to them here…

Suffice it to say when they flee the city to hide out in the now intensely nationalist North Wales, it doesn’t end well. They’re English after all.

Ethnic cleansing, anyone?

Screenshot 2019-08-31 at 15.43.26

Syrian migrants crossing Hungary in 2015.

This image was the spark for First World Problems. Although not ethnic cleansing per se, I wanted to examine how my comfortable, white, English, Radio 4 loving family could end up in exactly this situation in our own green and pleasant land.

I’m still praying that my dystopian hypothetical stays precisely that.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

When Is A Penis Not A Penis?

06 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Film, Film Criticism, Media, Pornography, Satire, Sexual Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Art, Eroticism, European Cinema, Isabella Eklöf, Victoria Carmen Sonne

I blame the vaccinations.

I’m 59 and a few weeks shy of a trip to Madagascar to see the lemurs (before the whole island is logged to destruction) the practice nurse advised me not only to renew my typhoid immunity but to have an MMR booster.

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 14.44.51

The Marmoset is looking forward to meeting one of his cute Lemur cousins in Madagascar

Cue eighteen hours of slightly trippy wooziness not to mention two extremely sore upper arms. So that was any creative work out of the window. Unable to sleep – because every time I rolled over the pain woke me up – I rolled, instead, down to the tram and headed into Central Manchester to wooze in front of a movie at the city’s premier arthouse cinema, Home.

What to see in the dog days of August? I’m not sure if it’s me, or the exodus of creative talent from traditional movie making to long form TV drama, but I often struggle to find films that really attract me these days. Summer is particularly barren… there aren’t even any blockbusters I want to see. Squinting at the programme on offer I opt for Danish indie movie, Holiday – written and directed by Isabella Eklöf whose screenplay for the dark-as-dark-can-be realist Troll drama, Border, so haunted me last year. I’ve vaguely skim read a couple of reviews of Holiday (i.e. looked at the star ratings) and seem to remember that critics have quite liked it. So in I go.

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 14.48.02.png

Great poster for ‘Holiday’ starring Victoria Carmen Sonne

Ok. I need to be up front about this. I didn’t make it to the end so I am not offering any kind of considered critique of the movie itself. No one can do that without watching the whole of something. To do so would be dishonest and wrong.

I blame the vaccinations. Or The Penis. Or perhaps a heady (!) combination of both.

spoiler_t-2

Spoilers ahoy – stop here and come back after you’ve seen the movie if you’re intending to take the plunge!

What follows below is a bit spoilery but not too much as it’s hardly a movie that depends on plot surprises. I sensed that most of the other people in the cinema knew what was coming (so to speak). Basically it’s the story of Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne), who (in film terms) is a sort of gangster’s moll (yes, the movie – and I – would eschew such dated and sexist terminology, but in critical terms that’s the genre/movie iconography we’re dealing with here). She’s on ‘holiday’ in Bodrum, Turkey, with her drug gangster boyfriend, Michael who is a violent, jealous misogynist.

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 12.42.01

Lai Yde as Michael giving his best violent misogynist on a white sofa performance

For the 70 minutes or so I watched, Sascha is navigating his controlling, simmering violent possessiveness. He owns her. He owns everyone. But especially her – and she is his to use and abuse (graphically) as he chooses. The question those first seventy minutes poses is how much is she prepared tolerate? Is his assumed ownership of her somehow to her advantage? Is she helpless or is she complicit? Will she exploit it at some point?  Will she fight back?

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 12.51.50

We get the point about Michael pretty quickly

As the holiday progresses she meets a friendly Dutch guy, Thomas, in an ice cream parlour and strikes up a more tender, if flirtatious (on both sides) relationship with him. Michael spots the connection between them and you know it’s not going to end well (although who knows, perhaps they all make up in the final reel and start a socialist commune in Aarhus. Like I say, I didn’t make it to the end.).

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 12.51.03

Thijs Römer as friendly Thomas the nice Dutch chap

The whole thing is photographed at an unsettling and icy distance. The Turkish sunlight is bright and glaring – but never warm. We are never allowed to engage with Sascha – but we are invited to look at her, almost askance, to scrutinise her behaviour, and to judge her.

Then there’s… The Scene.

I should have read the reviews more closely.

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 12.52.15

Kicking a lackey downstairs turns most movie drug lords a bit rapey

About fifty minutes in Michael has just beaten up one of his lackeys for messing up some drug deal or other, and he’s tense and angry, and so naturally he can only let off steam by vaginally, and orally raping Sascha and then ejaculating in her face.

Lawks a-mercy!

It’s played out in real time, in a continuous wide shot, in all its full frontal priapic and jizz-spurting glory.

Eugh. I’m literally hiding behind my iPad, thanking my lucky stars this isn’t a 4DX screening where they shake you around in your seat and spray your face with droplets!

I’ve seen some explicit movies in my time but this is just HORRIBLE.

Which I guess is the point. Although then I’m thinking… WHAT point exactly? My mind is racing.

I already know that rape is a terrible, terrifying, violent act. Do I need to see it? Does this actress really have to simulate abuse in this way to evoke this disgust in me? Hang on…. Is she simulating it? That purple greasy bell-end – moistened by Michael’s spit – looks pretty real to me – as does the glob of cum hitting her directly in the eye. (NB I am using this explicit language deliberately in order to express the graphic quality of the movie itself). So… what? Is the actress this guy’s partner in real life? What was the audition like? Even if she has consented to this, isn’t it still, effectively, abuse?

For sure, when the BBFC certificate came up at the beginning it did say ‘scenes of graphic sexual violence’ but I didn’t expect it to be this graphic. I look around and suddenly notice that the rest of the cinema is almost exclusively male. Men on their own. There are just two women in the screening. Did these guys know something I didn’t? Are they getting off on it? This is a foreign language ‘art’ movie, but what we’re seeing is the commonplace of a lot of pornography. A woman being horribly raped and the man firing off semen in her face. It is often said that the distinction between pornography and art is context, but any sense of context has completely gone now. Maybe I’m over thinking it – but my brain is now unable to watch or absorb the film as I try to decode what I’ve seen. But hey – ! – if I didn’t stop to think about it – if I didn’t worry about not just the story but the execution of the act for our entertainment – surely that would make me some kind of psychopath.

Well…

I hang on for another fifteen or twenty minutes… until the sexual violence starts up again and then I’ve had enough.

IMG_4204

This scene may well have ended with an innocent game of Twister but I’m afraid I didn’t stay to find out.

I’m hopeful that this film, written and directed by a woman, has some intelligent point to make, and all will make sense eventually, but in my newly vaccinated state I can’t help but think that there is no point to be made (of which I wasn’t already aware) that would make this onscreen sexual brutality worthwhile. But then I think, I’m staying with this purely because it’s by a woman director – a Danish woman director – and therefore it must somehow be inherently ok – it’s ART for God’s sake! – but if this exact same story with these exact same shots came from the camera of, say, Michael Bay, I doubt very much that Home would be screening it.

I’m off – as are another two audience members (including 50% of the female contingent).

On my woozy way home I turn my iPad back on (it has other uses than purely as a cinematic jizz shield). Checking out a few interviews with director Eklöf she is keen to defend the scene by saying that it’s not pornography because there are no close-ups. Seriously? Never come across the idea of voyeurism as a form of pornographic titillation, Isabella? There’s more than one kind of porn. I think to avoid the porn tag you really REALLY have to be doing something far more clearly not focussed on the visual representation of the explicit sexual act. I wonder also if she is assuming that what she is showing is so horrible that by definition it can’t be considered pornography. If only. Pornography is in the eye of the beholder. So to speak.

The other thing I learn is that it was a prosthetic penis after all.

I would say that I found that hard to get my head around – but I won’t as it sounds like a truly terrible and somewhat confused double entendre.

Ok, so it’s a fake cock. Does that make it better? It looked so real to me I assumed it was as real as the penises in Baise-Moi or Stranger By The Lake (which were the genuine article, complete with steaming ball-fresh semen). So if I am fooled by the member’s seeming verité then surely I HAVE to worry about use of a degrading sexual act not just as a narrative device but as something done to an actress on a movie set for a piece of paid entertainment. On the other hand, if I know in advance that it’s a rubber prosthetic, then it’s fundamentally trivial. It’s only pretend and it’s all about the artifice, and I’m no longer really concerned about the character. I’m just wondering how they got the jizz to fly out so convincingly, and ‘wow that still must have hurt when he stuck it down her throat’. Imagine having to fill out the risk assessment on that!

It now does precisely what devalued screen violence does. Whilst you might be alarmed by watching someone getting punched or slashed in a movie, you know it’s all fake so it’s rarely affecting. Unless of course you are either a) gullible or b) excited by the simulation of violence for the sake of entertainment. Indeed, I have (purposefully) adopted a fairly flip tone in this blog as to some of the things depicted in Holiday – serious issues of course – but I can, because now I know it didn’t really happen. It was just rubber and maybe a bit of CGI. The artifice invites me to stand my seriousness down.

Like I say, I am offering no judgement as to Holiday as a movie – I didn’t see how it resolved which I sincerely hope was in a worthy/intriguing/challenging way – all I can comment on is the stuff I saw, but I know I wasn’t alone in being driven from the cinema… and if that happens then surely the movie has failed.
Who is it for?
Does Eklöf want me to stay or to leave?
And if I do either of those, what does it say about me?
Assuming I do hang around, what is it trying to say and to whom?
Most fundamentally of all, does that thing need saying, does it need saying in that way, and if so, why?

There are also wider questions about art and cinema here. Do we need the dangerous moments in cinema to be obviously fake – or does this reveal something problematic with the self importance of film drama – a fundamental flaw/confusion in its aspirations to realism? If something looks real should we assume it isn’t – is that a healthy assumption or just an abdication of responsibility? If we do know it’s fake – or discover the fakery after the event – does that make it any less problematic?

For God’s sake, when is a penis not a penis?!?!

I stagger home, and crash out, hoping to sleep off the worst of my vaccination, comforted by the thought that in a few weeks I’ll be in Madagascar and I won’t have to worry about such questions…

Screenshot 2019-08-06 at 14.37.50

Sweet little Lemurs who know nothing of explicit Danish art cinema…

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Revelation of the Marmoset

13 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Brexit, Journalism, Political Satire, Politics, Satire

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Donald Trump, Politics, religion

‘Ande soe yt was thatte thye people of Albion looked acrosse the water to theire cousins yn the New Worlde who were rul-ed by a dylusyonal rhyhte wynged narssyssyste ande theye sayeth: ‘We want one of those’… ande theire wyshe was granted ande yt was trulye thye ende of dayes.’

Amen.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Uxbridge Guide To Euro Jargon

06 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Brexit, Political Satire, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Politics

Someone recently asked me the meaning of ‘prorogue’, and so, herewith, my helpful guide to Euro jargon courtesy of the Uxbridge Publishing House.

Prorogue – Someone who engages in villainy for money – not just on an amateur basis. Particularly in reference to Conservative leadership hopefuls.

Quorate – An apple that’s been completely consumed.

Federal – Had your Aunty round for tea

Europhile – You resemble one of Adam Flemming’s ring binders (one for fans of BBC Brexitcast).

Plebiscite – When your neighbours stick a sofa on their front lawn and start drinking cans of Tennent’s. 

Declaration – When, after ten cans, one of them announces they are Declan Donelly’s cousin.

Border – How you feel after watching the Ten O’Clock News, Question Time, Newsnight and This Week in close succession, and they all discuss leaving the EU.

Irish Border – The RTE equivalent.

Withdrawal – How you speak after you’ve been to the dentist.

Brexit – What holding a referendum does to a country.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Posturing vs Politics

04 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Politics, Republican Party

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

BBC News, Politics, Racism, Sadiq Khan

Screenshot 2019-06-04 at 15.48.10

Really? I’d’ve thought Donald would have dropped everything. I mean this is Jeremy Corbyn we’re talking about!

Hmmm… this is where the boundary between politics and posturing gets blurred. There isn’t an easy or comfortable answer to any of this – but it does require mature politicians – certainly those who aspire to the highest office – to think long and hard about how on earth they engage with the world – and some of the dickheads who run it – and stand up for essential principles whilst simultaneously protecting our citizens and ensuring the long term prosperity for all which is at the heart of Labour politics.

As Emily Thornberry made very clear on the Today Programme this morning it was important to attend state banquets with President Xi (he of mass persecution, executions and concentration camps) in order for Corbyn to raise these issues with him (although did he? Did he really?).

Aside from this honking double standard, I would have liked to have seen Corbyn addressing cross party rallies in favour of Remaining in the EU with equal passion. His selectivity when it comes to the causes he espouses is little more than opportunistic, politically simplistic and extremely immature.

And much as I love Sadiq Khan – and would happily vote for him if he were Labour leader – I don’t quite get why people are so outraged at Trump for Tweeting about him after Khan wrote in a national newspaper that he was (effectively) a fascist. I think references to fascism are over used, but broadly I agree with Khan. However if you call someone a fascist and tell them they’re not welcome in your city… are you really surprised if they tell you to fuck off right back?

Grow up everyone.

And I mean EVERYONE.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Here Is the News (I Agree With)

03 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by Martin Jameson in Journalism, Main Stream Media, Media, Politics, Social Media, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

BBC News, Bias, Channel 4 News, Cockroft Rutherford Annual Lecture, Dorothy Byrne, Fran Unsworth, Impartiality, Jon Snow, Mark Kermode, More Or Less, Politics Live

Last week, as a proud alumnus of Manchester University, I attended the annual Cockroft Rutherford lecture, given by Dorothy Byrne, Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4. She argued the case for strong political journalism as a key pillar of our democracy, coupled with an analysis of why those who wish to subvert it have turned their weapons on those who seek to report on them.

You can see her whole lecture here. It’s about an hour long and the lecture proper doesn’t start until about twenty-five minutes in. It’s very entertaining and incisive. Well worth a looksee.

Screenshot 2019-06-03 at 09.33.32

In the colour factor corner…

However, in a largely convincing account of the nuanced meaning of due impartiality, Ms Byrne seemed to have a bit of a blindspot as to some of her own channel’s output. She took a good deal of righteous delight in attacking the BBC for giving undue airtime to climate deniers in the name of balance, conveniently forgetting that it was Channel 4 who led the way on this with The Great Global Warming Swindle back in 2007. She decided that a six part BBC documentary about David Cameron’s tenure as PM would be a waste of money – without having seen it (it may be, it may not be – who knows? There’s certainly plenty to say about his rise to power and, deride it or not, his pivotal premiership 2010-2016. Her uninformed, prejudicial dismissiveness was hardly setting a good journalistic example) and she took great pride in quoting a statistic that said that 90% of Channel 4 News’s audience believed that their coverage was truly independent, the highest of any mainstream news programme.

Duh. Of course they do. They’re Channel 4 News’s audience.

When people say – as many in the Cockroft audience did – that they think Channel 4 News is more independent, or more balanced than the BBC what they mean is, they agree with its very particular Guardian style Liberal/Left – and pro-Remain – agenda. They want Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy to express their righteous indignation at people with Right Wing/Brexit views.

I like Channel 4 News. I watch it every day.

Screenshot 2019-06-03 at 10.18.58

Jon Snow – concern etched on his face. His particular brand of liberal left hand wringing can be pretty wearisome. I can wring my own lefty liberal hands, ta, Jon.

I like The Guardian. I have a subscription. Not because these news outlets are impartial (which they aren’t) but because they have a very clear agenda, which throws a clear light on things, albeit from a very distinct angle. As long as you know what that bias is – and it is bias – you can evaluate what the truth may be. A bit like a Mark Kermode film review. I listen to Mark every week, but there’s no getting away from it, he likes all sorts of tedious shite – however, as long as I know what sort of tedious shite he likes I can work out whether the movie is worth seeing or not.

Screenshot 2019-06-03 at 11.03.56

A terrific critic, but oh Lordy, I’ve felt my life draining away watching some of the films he has recommended.

I prefer BBC News. Why? Well for the reasons Fran Unsworth  enunciated in yesterday’s Observer in response to this broadside the previous week.

Screenshot 2019-06-03 at 10.22.42.png

And in the red corner….

It tells me all sorts of things I DON’T want to hear. Its commentators come from all corners of the political spectrum, not just the ones I agree with. I have to work a bit harder to make my own judgements. The interviewers aren’t trying to express my rage (I can do rage on my own, thank you very much). It’s not presented to me wrapped up in a parcel of satisfying righteous indignation.

Many of my friends on Social Media vehemently disagree with me, insisting that while ‘we’ may be able to divine the truth from such output, most viewers aren’t bright enough, and will be easily swayed by, say, a Nigel Farage, unless the interviewer leaps on them and tells them – and tells the viewers that they’re wrong. Angrily!!

Bloody hell, that’s patronising. And not just a little arrogant as well.

Core to our democracy is the trust that people, by and large, are pretty smart and that everyone has the skills to make considered judgements providing they are given the tools. That’s far preferable than the presenters or interviewers editorialising on our behalf. That’s presumably why the BBC has invested so much into the Reality Check team and they are referred to most days on the BBC TV News. But it is our responsibility as an audience and as participants in the democratic process to make the effort not to go out and make a cup of tea when Chris Morris tips up, or when the fact checker feeds back on PMQs on BBC2’s Politics Live which he does EVERY week. Expecting to be spoon fed won’t help the democratic process – and hats off to the BBC for constantly pointing people to Reality Check web pages, Reality Check news items, the very brilliant More or Less on BBC Radio 4, The Briefing Room etc etc etc.

Screenshot 2019-06-03 at 10.27.01

This is the programme that does more than any other to tool the listener up to root out bullshit for themselves…

So I will never say: “Well of course I understand what’s going on but it’s the stupid masses who don’t… so they need to be told what to think.” I see an awful lot of BBC bashing social media from people who take that attitude, and it depresses me. Just as in drama – my own personal trade – no one ever wrote a decent script assuming the audience to be more stupid than the writer.

So, for this Marmoset, it’s bloody amazing that the BBC has the courage to go on doing this, and we should treasure it, not bleat on Social Media because it isn’t saying precisely what we as individuals think. The day it does that is the day it has stopped being News and become our own personal echo chamber.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Dog Ate Corbyn’s Homework

25 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by Martin Jameson in Anti-semitism, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Political Satire, Politics, Racism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Irony, Politics, Racism

Poor old Jezza’s had a rough time of it recently.

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 10.08.21

Jeremy Corbyn – International Man of Peace

Following the dissemination of Mr C’s completely unedited comments about British zionists and their reluctance to study history or understand ‘English Irony’ despite having lived here for ‘probably all their lives’, this morning, the Corbyn apologist defence seems to be running along the lines of: ‘Ok, yes, Corbyn definitely said a racist thing, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually racist.’

Which we can add to:

‘He didn’t notice that the anti-semitic mural was anti-semitic’

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 10.20.21

Admittedly very hard to spot the anti-semitism here, although you can probably see Wally/Waldo in there somewhere

Or:

‘It would have been rude not to say “good point” to the phone-in contributor complaining of Zionist Liars at the BBC – especially after Press TV had paid him £20,000!’

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 10.23.36

Unfortunately I can’t link to the relevant clip as it has been removed from YouTube

And:

‘It would have been rude to interrupt the ranting anti-semite at the NEC – and anyway you only know about that because some bastard recorded it!’

Similarly:

‘It would have been rude to have interrupted the guy comparing Israel to the Nazis at the provocative event purposefully scheduled for Holocaust Memorial Day’

Not to mention, my personal favourite:

‘I was present but not involved…’ (…at the wreath laying ceremony where there’s a photograph of me laying a wreath.)

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 10.17.02

Present, but definitely not involved in any way

As others have commented, surely the world’s unluckiest lifelong anti-racist.

But let’s be honest, he’s brilliant at excuses. Of course you don’t need any of these if you use the McDonnell Special – the classic catch-all: ‘His remarks were taken out of context’.

This is absolutely true.

The context of most of these events is that Corbyn was an obscure back bencher and no one gave a sh*t about what he said. The context now is that he is the leader of the Labour Party and could become Prime Minister.

Let’s hope not, eh.

Screen Shot 2018-08-25 at 10.29.31

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Yes, Jeremy IS the problem

27 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Martin Jameson in Anti-semitism, Free Speech, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Main Stream Media, Racism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anti-semitism, Islamism, Middle East, Politics, Racism

For anyone who, perhaps, still doesn’t get quite why there is a specific problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s relationship to anti-semitism and quite why it’s problematic, I think this video clip – which I chanced upon in my researches – illuminates the nuances and consequences of his behaviour very well.

Click here to watch a clip of Jeremy Corbyn presenting the Comment section on PressTV in March 2010

Jeremy Corbyn on PressTV 6.3.2010

Jeremy Corbyn on Press TV in March 2010 – you can view the video at https://vimeo.com/262008952

Press TV is an Iranian backed news network affiliated to IRIB, The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. There’s no reason why Jezzer shouldn’t have appeared on that network if he wanted to and he doesn’t say anything anti semitic whatsoever.

BUT.

The caller’s complaint is that the BBC is supposed to be objective, but continually invites ‘Zionist liars’ onto its news programmes and ‘never corrects them, never ever’.

Again this is an opinion from a caller to an Iranian TV station – albeit factually incorrect – and on its own, weeeeell it’s on the borders of antisemitism… Is it okay to talk about Zionists critically? Sure. But when you mix that with the implication that the BBC is colluding with ‘Zionist liars’… well suddenly we’re into Zionist media conspiracy territory, which is often code for notions of Jewish conspiracy. It certainly trades on that well worn trope.

So what does Jeremy do? He nods and says ‘good point’ and advises the caller to complain to the BBC. Well, the advice to complain to the BBC is fine. But is it a ‘good point’?

No, it isn’t. It’s factually incorrect.

Unless Jeremy has a mind set that thinks: ‘Hmmm… yes, actually the BBC does have a pro Zionist agenda…’ which then puts him into playing along with those tired old tropes of Jewish conspiracy.

Jezzer and his apologists might say: ‘Be fair… he’s presenting on Iranian backed TV. He’s hardly going to tell a caller that they might be wrong about the BBC colluding with Zionist liars. So, basically he’s just being polite, like not trying to start a family row when racist granddad starts up during Christmas dinner.’ On its own, maybe that’s a fair excuse.

But then he ‘didn’t look at the Mear One mural properly… and was just making a general point about freedom of expression’ (which is odd because a couple of years earlier he spoke out publicly against the Danish cartoons. Apparently freedom of expression didn’t apply in that context.). And then there are all the dodgy FB groups he’s signed up to. ‘Well you know how it is, you just get signed up to these things and you don’t really pay full attention…’ Oh yes, then there are his ‘friends’ in Hamas. He’s just being polite again in the name of dialogue.

Sorry peeps – but it won’t fly.

This is a pattern. At best – being as generous as I can muster – it’s about having a tin ear to anti-semitism and the subtle ways it can manifest, which works differently from actually saying explicitly Jew hating, racist things.

However, I do think it’s worse than that. On a conscious level I’m prepared to believe he is utterly genuine when he talks about opposing anti semitism and being militant against racism. The trouble is, he doesn’t appear to understand what anti-semitism is, or how it works. He doesn’t apply the same standards to his own behaviour that he would, say, with regard to skin colour racism, sexism, homophobia or disability prejudice. Most of us in this modern liberal world of ours, accept that we can all manifest traits and tropes from ingrained or institutionalised prejudice. I know I still question my own attitudes in all sorts of situations, which is tough for me (!) because I love a bit of political incorrectness!

The one person you can’t trust is the person who declares that they are somehow immune of these very human foibles concerning difference.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.19.31

When Chris Mullin spends the day  on Twitter saying ‘Jeremy doesn’t have a racist bone in his body’ my immediate reaction is – yes he does – even if it’s one of those tiny tiny tiny bones in the inner ear… especially if it’s one of the tiny ones in his ear! Small though they are, they are somewhat crucial in how we perceive the world.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.24.48

The precise location of Jeremy Corbyn’s racist bone…?

Everyone clunks from time to time…  oooh whoops, here’s Chris Mullin again:

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 13.20.07

Mullin in full paranoid ‘goysplaining’ mode here as he causally negates any claims of anti-semitism dismissing them as Jewish Leaders ‘ganging up’ … Ganging up..? Oh that’ll be those bloody conspiring Jews again, will it Chris?

As for clunking, sadly Jeremy does it more than most as this pattern demonstrates.

So, yes, this is about Jeremy, and it is about his leadership. I’ve seen more anti semitism on FB and Twitter in the last couple of years than I’ve encountered in my lifetime. And pretty much all of it from the left. Well obviously my social media feed is self selecting – because I am of the left. So I’m aware that it has become amplified, and right wing anti-semitism has become less visible to me – but that doesn’t make left wing anti semitism ok. It’s not a competition.

It’s clear to me that Corbyn’s tenure has made these views – sometimes expressed very subtly – far more acceptable for those who want to find a home for them in the left.

Here are some tips for Jeremy and his team: If you don’t want to be considered anti-semitic don’t endorse the viewpoints of people who imagine a Zionist conspiracy at the BBC; don’t call Hamas your friends; don’t casually ‘fail to see’ eye poppingly anti semitic murals; don’t sign up to anti semitic FB groups; and take a long look at your public profile.

You can SAY you’re opposed to anti semitism all you like, but it’s hard to find the public appearances and actions and engagement with the Jewish community that actually prove that to be the case. It’s rather easy to find actions that suggest the opposite.
Jeremy Corbyn is the leader. He can blame ‘pockets’ all he likes… but I would argue they take their cue from him. He gives them permission.

He nods and says: ‘Good point’.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

What Just Happened (Or Didn’t) OR The Irresistible Rise of Jeremy Corbyn Mark II

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Martin Jameson in Free Speech, General Election 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Political Satire, Politics, Satire, Social Media, Theresa May

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Irony, Realpolitik

On the figurative morning after the figurative night before, heads spinning from too much late night Wine and Dimbleby – phrases like ‘political earthquake’ spewing from the commentariat cliché machine like little sausages filled with pungently seasoned paté de cliché – with the heady whiff of a seemingly inevitable Tory defeat in our nostrils, wafting tantalisingly from the horizon ahead of us and the absolutely understandable desire for the many not the few to whoop with joy…

….and despite an opening sentence far too long for its own good…

…it’s easy to be simplistic, it’s easy to generalise, it’s easy to be binary, it’s easy to be revisionist. So let’s try not to do any of that.

daviddimbleby

(sings in the style of Cliff Richard) ‘Election time, Dimbleby and wine….’

Someone asked me recently: ‘Why NinjaMarmoset?’ Well aside from it being an anagram of my name, once my old university mucker George Dillon suggested it, I knew that the implicit cocktail of tufted monkey cuddliness and Japanese ninjutsu stealth, espionage and assassination was the dialectical blog moniker for me. In light of that, I was quite amused when three different people suggested – or demanded – on Friday June 9th, the day after the general election – that I might like to ‘apologise’ for having been so vocal in my criticism of one J Corbyn esquire over the last two years. Aside from the somewhat creepy and controlling tenor of this suggestion – ‘May the apostates be lined up and made to recant!‘ – I think the time would be better spent having an analytical and ambivalent simian nibble at five things that actually did or didn’t happen on June 8th 2017. It’s taken me a few days, but that’s because I was running low on goat vellum.

Marmoset_copy

The Marmoset takes a sideways look

1) It was a stunning victory for Jeremy Corbyn / Labour Lost

The stats have been much ruminated upon in more authoritative organs than this, but whilst it was undoubtedly an extraordinary and surprising poll turnaround, the Labour Party – plus all the oppositional left of centre parties combined – lost the election. That’s in terms of parliamentary seats, of course, but even if you dig into vote share – and the popular vote itself – Theresa May still pulled in over 13.5 million votes, increased the Tory vote share by five and a half per cent, and at 42.4% is up there with Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and John Major, all of whom enjoyed huge popular mandates with similar or lesser percentages.

So when Shami Chakrabarti went onto the BBC the night after the election and claimed that ‘[Jeremy Corbyn] effectively won’, in reality that was the one thing that hadn’t happened. Achievement or no achievement, ‘effectively’ Labour lost.

This isn’t about pouring cold water on the phenomenon of a Conservative poll lead of twenty points on 18th April falling to just three per cent on June 8th, it’s about looking the numbers in the eye and asking what they mean. US President Lyndon B Johnson famously said that the first rule of politics is that ‘its practitioners need to be able to count’. No matter how you spin this, a minority isn’t a majority, so Labour and its supporters mustn’t fall into the trap of believing that it is, and now, more than ever, must ask serious questions as to why it isn’t, and how the next hurdle can be o’erleapt.

Theresa May ran the worst Conservative election campaign in living memory (certainly in my adult life and that’s going back a fair way!) – was the least inspiring and most robotic candidate – launched a disastrous manifesto, which she promptly dumped etc etc etc and yet she still had those extremely impressive voting stats. Yes! Impressive! You think Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t hail numbers like that as a mandate?

And yet many in print and online media have hailed Labour’s result as a nation waking up to Jeremy Corbyn’s message of hope. It isn’t. It’s less than half of a nation, and one that remains more emphatically divided than ever. Whilst it’s understandable that most of the commentary since last Thursday has been about Jeremy Corbyn’s success, by far the more important question is why Labour still lost.

Of course, if there were an election tomorrow – with May still in charge (once the screams of horror at the very thought had died down) – Labour would romp home without a doubt. Right now – in the cold light of morning – it feels very much as if the period of Tory hegemony that began in 2010 is well and truly over (apart from the next five years of course…). But the election won’t be happening tomorrow. And it won’t be happening with Theresa May as Tory leader either.

Several commentators – including Owen Jones – have made comparison to the poll turnaround of 1945 which saw a 12% swing to Labour bring in Attlee’s epoch defining government. Hmm. As returnees to this page will know, comparisons to Attlee turn me into a werewolf (scroll down to the final section of this blog from last year…). Yes it was a 12% swing from the election result at the previous election, ten years and a world war away in 1935, but opinion polling such as it was had Labour creeping into the lead as early as 1942 despite patriotic support for Churchill as war leader. Of course this can be interpreted at least two ways. The Corbyn disciple can say: ‘Well there you go! Jeremy achieved in three weeks what Clement Attlee did in three years!’ A more circumspect observer might counsel caution. Like a dodgy share portfolio, values can go down as well as up, and such rapid change often indicates a high degree of unpredictable volatility, and a fragility to the numbers as an insecure electorate grasp at whatever straws of hope are wafted their way; or in dangerous times, at whatever least-worst solutions appear to offer themselves. Attlee built his victory on years at the helm as deputy prime minister alongside Churchill during a world war, and in that respect had become something of a trusted – or trustable – brand for whom waverers could chance their vote. Corbyn does not yet have that brand reliability in the centre ground, and will need to replace it with something of equal solidity if current polling isn’t to be proved transitory in the face of a new Tory foe showing the basics of competence.

And if anyone reading this is asking: ‘Why does this scuzzy little tree rat only bang on about Labour’s problems? Why’s he being so negative?’ It’s because these questions cannot be ducked. The Tories ‘won’ in real terms – ! – but they’re sure as hell asking themselves why they didn’t win big enough. Both sides have questions to answer, and Labour’s are just as tough, and any serious politician knows that the next election belongs to the party with the best and most hard-faced answers.

2) It Was The Youth Wot Won It!

Well… yes, and no.

hqdefault

That’s the whole point of this blog, so you’d better get used to it!

At the time of writing, the exact voting demographics aren’t out yet, but it seems reasonable to assert just by looking at where the big swings took place (university towns such as Canterbury…) that young voters, many registering for the first time, got stuck in and helped to tip the balance in certain places. So far, so youthful (and middle class and aspirational…).

But before we get too carried away, just go back to the beginning here.

Labour didn’t win. Labour lost. The Youth didn’t win it.

I’ve rattled on pretty tediously over the last couple of years how campaigning to the disenfranchised and those who habitually don’t vote is, by definition, a fairly fruitless enterprise. Whilst I stand partially corrected that insofar as clearly there has been an impact this time, my point still stands. According to some psephologists there are only seventy-five constituencies in which the youth vote alone can effectively outnumber an older, more conservative demographic, and before last Thursday, fifty-seven of those were already in Labour hands. Perhaps this explains at least in part why Labour didn’t make even greater gains than they did. But it also tells us that some of these impressive and unexpected swings and/or gains were to do with marginal voting patterns… most probably (no evidence as yet) older voters alienated by Tory manifesto proposals on Social Care, the Triple Lock, and universal Winter Fuel allowances. If this proves to be the case then you can argue that it’s those marginal voters who really hold the keys to 10 Downing Street.

If/when Labour get in next time – it’ll be the crumblies wot win it.

It’s still the case, as it always is and always will be, that in order to win a general election – especially an absolute majority not dependent on a progressive alliance with the SNP or the LibDems – a crucial body of people, who already vote, who are not tribal, and are open to changing their minds, are there to be persuaded by whoever seriously aspires to power.

4) This Was The Brexit Election / This Wasn’t The Brexit Election

Well… it was… and it wasn’t.

Or to put it another, and equally contradictory way: it was supposed to be; but then it wasn’t; but all along everything about it actually was; everything can be traced back to it; and will continue to be Brexit flavoured for the foreseeable future.

In some ways this is the most depressing aspect of this whole awful election – and it seems to me that pretty much everyone is culpable. The only reason we ended up with Theresa May in the first place was because of Brexit. The reason she wanted a bigger mandate was to give herself a free hand on Brexit. Labour was (is) hopelessly split and confused and wilfully, teeth-grindingly vague on Brexit – as of course the Tories are and have been for forty years. The public trusted May on Brexit. And then they found out she didn’t have a bloody clue either. Both teams decided that Brexit was the policy that dare not speak it’s name and stopped talking about it altogether. The electorate were sick of Brexit and didn’t understand the horrific complexity of it either, so we were happy to move on to other things. Tim Farron stuck his hand up and said; ‘Let’s talk about Brexit’… and the whole country told him to shut up.

And no one gave a flying f*ck what Paul Nuttall had to say about it.

Then terrorists started murdering people on our streets and in our concert arenas and suddenly it didn’t seem so important.

Despite a lame effort in the closing stages, we never got back on track. This may yet prove to the defining national disaster of the twenty first century and Theresa May’s negotiating stance ended up being the one thing we didn’t really discuss beyond the vaguest of details. Labour barely challenged it, because they knew that their multi billion pound spending pledges are absolutely meaningless without a successful outcome, and they can’t promise that either.

elephant

And as for us, the electorate? Basically we’ve been sticking out fingers in our ears and hoping for the best. Every second that we didn’t discuss Brexit and demand clarity and forensic detail about how the next ten years was going to work – was in itself an example of how Brexit was shaping everything that happened. We should all be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

CLwZrkFUEAAv3G3

Overly cynical perhaps, but this is how discussion of Brexit felt for much of the election…

Negotiations start next week.

4) Main Stream Media Was Finally Shown The Door

Weeeellll….. (wheedle, wheedle, wheedle) …it depends how you look at it…

…and frankly I’m not sure I can be arsed to go into great detail here, having explored the issue many times on these pages, but let me have one more go.

According to Kerry-Anne Mendoza, The Canary’s editor-in-chief interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (click here and scroll to 25.25 to hear the relevent extract), in the run-up to the election her website had 25 million hits – outperforming Reuters, The Economist, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Times.

This poses two crucial questions. The first is one concerns the most fundamental of life’s questions:

chicken-egg

This is actually my favourite joke… ever

Given the partisan nature of The Canary surely its job isn’t to persuade the politically neutral, but to give voice to the new activism on the Corbyn/Momentum left. People choose to go there because they already believe in those ideas. There’s nothing wrong with that – apart from the appalling quality of the journalism. Similarly, the Mail is read by people who go to that paper because it reinforces their world view. There’s nothing wrong with that either – apart from the appalling quality of the journalism.

The one major exception in print journalism is the London Evening Standard which is free and browsed at some point by everyone on public transport in the capital. That one paper does have an ability to shape opinion, rather than simply to follow it in order to sell units.

The second question – and perhaps far more important – is that with those kinds of numbers, who exactly is the Main Stream Media now? And if it’s not broadcast or print media, then do organs such as The Canary see themselves as exempt from the kind of criticisms hitherto aimed at minnows such as those owned by the Murdoch empire?

3833081-6535156727-quote

An important thing to remember for anyone spinning a line…

5) It’s Time For Corbyn’s Critics To Eat Large Portions Of Humble Pie 

I completely get why formerly critical members of the Parliamentary Labour Party are queuing up to eat humble pie all over the tellybox over Corbyn’s relative success last week. They can sniff victory – should the May government collapse any time soon – and so a public realignment behind a now successful figurehead is most definitely the new realpolitik.

humble-pie_1758649

Humble Pie lookin’ tasty!!

I use the word ‘figurehead’ advisedly. My guess is (and it can only be a guess) that many of them still harbour deep reservations about Corbyn’s core skills – that much has been evident from several TV interviews not least Hillary Benn’s politely evasive exchange with Evan Davis (Newsnight 13th June 2017) – but see a Labour victory by any means as superseding those concerns. Go for it!! Why not?

I’m not a member of the Labour Party any more – something I find incredibly liberating – so luckily for me I don’t have to suspend my judgement, turn a blind eye, or get behind anyone.

So what just happened (or didn’t) to bring about this transformation?

Let’s not get revisionist about this. Three weeks into the campaign and it was all still extremely grim. Jeremy was stumbling and carping through TV interviews; the polls were terrible; his campaign was rooted in declarations of class war, threats to come after Mike Ashleigh and Philip Green, and a desperate vision of Britain that was like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. Labour candidates were apologetically pleading on the doorsteps for votes on the basis that Jeremy couldn’t possibly get into Number Ten…

And then manifesto week came along – and Jeremy Corbyn Mark II was born!!! Cue heavenly choirs!!

choir-of-heaven

If you’ve got it, flaunt it!!

He didn’t do well because his critics were wrong. He did well because at the eleventh hour he – or someone in his campaign team – woke up to the reality that many of the criticisms were correct and needed addressing pronto. He did well because Theresa May decided to self destruct in a manner never before witnessed in a UK election campaign – and take what was left of the Tory brand down with her. And he did well because he concentrated on what he is good at. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!!

Disingenuous? That’s not my intention. Seriously. Let’s look at the evidence, take a ride through the checklist of design faults on the old Jeremy Corbyn Mark I. I think there was one in an edition of What Party Leader. Let me dig it out….

Image: For the last two years those of us not so enamoured of the old model have despaired of the ill fitting suits, the scruffy beard, the the wince inducing Lenin cap. Fans of the original leapt to his defence. ‘It’s authentic!’ they opined. ‘Jeremy the Saviour is above such superficialities!’ David Cameron mocked The Chosen One in parliament, passing on Mama Cam’s advice that he should ‘put on a proper suit and do up his tie’. Jeremy has done just that – got a decent haircut and trimmed his beard – and now at least he vaguely looks the part.
Corbyn Mk I rating 3/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10

Manner: Up until the launch of the manifesto on May 16th, Corbyn’s encounters with the media were uniformly tetchy and defensive. He would regularly struggle to hold his temper, and bark spiky rebukes to any journalist daring to ask a difficult question. Again the disciples cried unto the heavens: ‘Go, Jeremy, go! For they are all unbelievers massed against you!! Tetch away, Lord! The World will know of their bias and You will show them!!’
Unfortunately for the disciples, some wise head in Labour HQ said: ‘You know what Jezza, you don’t half come across as a grumpy old twat. Why don’t you loosen up? Smile! Your smiles become thee well! Appear cross-gartered and in yellow stockings!’
Ehm, no, they didn’t say that last bit, although a nip of Twelfth Night never did anybody any harm. Yer man has had some solid media training. He hasn’t lost his temper on air for nearly a month now! Whahoooo! And he doesn’t worry about the questions – choosing to answer whatever is thrown at him in his own way. It’s pretty basic stuff but at last – AT LAST!! – he seems to have got the hang of it.
Having said that, since the election, he has come over as a bit smug. As a lot smug, if Sunday’s Andrew Marr show is anything to go by. He’ll need to watch that. The British public love an underdog, but they hate a smug bastard.
Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10 (or 7/10 factoring in smugness)

Corbyn is a Campaigner, not a Politician: The apostates spake unto the acolytes: ‘I know you love him an’ everything, but he’s spent 35 years on the back benches, voting against his party more than 500 times and organising demos. He hasn’t got a clue about parliamentary politics, or actually getting things done, which is a team sport, dependent on cunning strategems, machiavellian deals etc etc.’
‘Ah,’ they sang in shimmering harmony, ‘but He speaks of a New Politics – Straight Talking and Honest – like one of those loan consolidation packages advertised by Carol Vorderman on daytime TV!’
Well… the jury’s out on this one. The very nature of What Just Happened is about him doing what he does best – i.e. campaigning. Huge rallies of adoring crowds who have come to be filled with the Jezzy spirit. He’s clearly had some debate training but dealing forensically with counter argument is still not his strong point. We’re yet to see whether He-That-Is-Jez can persuade the hard core doubters, or operate within the febrile atmosphere of a hung parliament for what could be a lot longer than people anticipate. Whilst I’m dubious of comparisons to 1974, let no one forget that the Wilson/Callaghan government lasted for the full five years.

And that’s before we even get to considering the realities of what it means to actually govern, should that come to pass at some point.
Campaign rating (Both models) 9/10     Politics rating (Both models) – tbc

The next category is a double header:

Jeremy Corbyn is too extreme: Personally speaking, this has never been the issue for me, as I’ve said many times on these pages. My beef has been far more about competence and the superficial politics-subsidiary-Santa-list nature of his policies, but rooting around the track record of JC, McDonnell and other the apostles, there are certainly traces of alarming fundamentalism knocking about. I won’t evidence that here, simply because there’s no point. With a dazzling starburst of realpolitik, the team have moved on – to a far tastier, easy to chew left of centre populism. Which leads us to…

He needs to woo the Centre Ground: Anyone who dared suggest this on social media during the two leadership campaigns was roundly abused as Blairite Scum, Tory Lite, NeoLib Bastard etc etc etc. Jeremy was True Labour, the Authentic Voice of the Working Class, the Disenfranchised etc etc but of course the centre is where UK elections are won. There is no getting away from it. Corbyn’s team know it. And so, Alice-like, we have gone through the looking glass and, as explored in a previous blog, the glittering utopia of the Labour manifesto and subsequent pledges is full of fabulous retail offers to an anxious middle class wanting to hang on to their cash – not to mention promises of legions of armed police and increased surveillance. Hey! I’m not knocking it. It’s a good thing – apart from the small matter of a tax and spend model that is probably unsustainable in the long term.

But, hey… we can deal with that later…

…can’t we???
Corbyn Mk I rating 5/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 7½/10

Corbyn is divisive and anti-aspirational: One of Corbyn’s more dreary character traits has been the constant portrayal of the country in a state of collapse. This may yet come to pass if Brexit proves as problematic as it threatens to be – for which Mr J should be held as responsible as any other Brexit politician – see below – but at the moment, despite huge inequalities, eye-watering stresses on public services etc etc we still live in one of the most prosperous and privileged countries on the planet. To get people on board with working together to create a fairer society, the focus has to be on aspiration, not the constant reiteration of everything that’s wrong. Defining the country purely in terms of the Have-Nots versus the Haves may reflect a certain truth but it ends up smearing and dividing everyone.

Right up to the campaign launch in Manchester on May 8th, JC Mk I was still in the ascendent, a wide eyed sooth sayer, stirring the masses to an angry war against Mike Ashleigh and Sir Philip Green who ‘would have reason to be afraid’! Whether or not these guys deserve a kicking, anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations would have good cause to feel nervous.

I think someone had a word.

He may well have gone on saying that at rallies – I have no idea – but he kept such pitchfork-and-torches talk to himself when in front of a TV camera. The media advisers know exactly how it looks.

Eight days later, when the Labour manifesto hit the table, it was utopia all the way. Lots of free money, and an industrial paradise where five per cent of the population would see us all right by paying ‘a little bit more’.

Whether or not this can work in practice is for another blog, but it’s certainly the way to go if you want to win an election – and the other lot aren’t saying anything apart from: ‘It’s going to be shit, and I’m the best person to deal with quite how shit it’s going to be… oh and by the way, I want your house.’

PF-Labourmanifesto_1614491c

A Labour family watch a nuclear strike in the sure and certain knowledge that we won’t be retaliating … What??? That’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Corbyn Mk I rating 1/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 8/10

Anti Semitism / Terrorist Sympathies: Shortly before the election I wrote on these pages about my reasons for not voting Labour in the light of the Manchester bomb attack so I won’t reiterate that here. Keyboard apologists are keen to poo-poo such concerns, but in some darkened room, Labour strategists know full well quite how vulnerable they are on these flanks. Whether Diane Abbott is truly unwell is not for me to say, but rest assured they slept a little easier once both she and Ken Livingstone were safely consigned to the annexe… you know, the one with the sound proof walls and double padlocks.

Meanwhile on social media the narrative is that if it’s ok for Theresa May to snuggle up to the DUP then it’s okay for Jezza to get cosy with Sinn Fein/IRA. Aside from the ahistorical mismatch, the logic doesn’t work at all. As far as I’m concerned it’s a good reason not to vote for either of them, and you can bet your bottom Euro that Labour brains are praying that Sinn Fein don’t suddenly decide to take their seats at Westminster. That could kill Corbyn’s chances stone dead at the next election.

Meanwhile Corbyn has to tread very carefully in his dealings with the DUP.  He might need their help if he wants to defeat May on key policies, and if he lays into them with the hand wringing self assurance of many on social media he will end up being just as destabilising to the NI peace process as his Tory counterpart. This is his opportunity to rise above prejudice and act like a statesman.

Corbyn Mk I rating 1/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 5/10

Defence: This is still a mess. Labour Party policy is still multilateralist. Jeremy is – and forever will be – unilateralist. He got away with it this time because the two terrorist attacks shifted the focus from ICBM to IED… and so the irreconcilable confusion over nuclear policy was forgotten, but it might not be next time and a newly united Labour party will have to get its shit together. Always worth remembering that the electorate aren’t unilateralist, and I doubt they ever will be, as Neil Kinnock learned to his cost. Where Corbyn goes on this might be his ultimate realpolitikal hurdle.

Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 4/10

Jeremy Corbyn is an intellectual lightweight: Sorry peeps, nothing I’ve seen, no matter how adoring his crowds, no matter how confident he has become in a TV one-to-one has changed this. Polling success or not, no one can sprout IQ overnight. Although, having said that, when the incumbent Tory administration is as utterly shite as it is at the moment perhaps brains cease to matter.

Until of course he actually gets into power.

This is what really worries me when I consider the prospect of a Corbyn premiership. I still don’t think he has the intellectual chops, or political fleetfootedness to handle the job. That’s me being polite. And that’s before we get to some of the utter dimwits taking up space on the front bench after the so-called coup of 2016. He has one or two strong political players – Emily Thornberry, Sturdy Starmer, and the effete bruiser that is Barry ‘Creepy’ Gardiner… but Diane Abbott? Richard Burgon? Seriously?

And yet… who knows? The change in fortunes over the last month seems to have woken the spirit of realpolitik in the Corbyn team, and once that happens quite a few smarts fall into place as a matter of course. My personal jury will take a lot of convincing, and he’ll need to bring in some the more experienced players back onto the field if he wants to be taken seriously by floating voters remaining to be convinced. Yvette Cooper for Shadow Home Secretary anyone?
Corbyn Mk I rating 2/10     Corbyn Mk II rating 2/10

Corbyn failed the country over the EU Referendum: Don’t give me that ‘he-was-campaigning-really, the-media-didn’t-report-it’ bollox. Seriously, just don’t. I might not be responsible for my actions. He didn’t, ok? Get used to it. Own it. No one but the most revisionist Corbotee seriously believes he did. As I’ve said elsewhere, THIS is what campaigning looks like: the smart suit, the smiling ‘vote-for-me’ face, the rallies, the passion – not going on Channel 4 and giving the EU 7½ out of 10; not calling for Article 50 to be invoked on live TV the morning after the referendum before he’s consulted a single cabinet colleague (and people wonder why they all resigned????).

On one hand, what’s done is done. But on the other I still can’t forgive him. If Jeremy Corbyn (with the help of a Tory meltdown) can knock seventeen points of a twenty point Conservative poll lead – swinging millions of votes – then don’t try to tell me he couldn’t have swung the 600,000 votes we needed to overcome the 1.2 million majority enjoyed by the Leave campaign. If he’d got his shit together last year none of this would be happening right now. None of it.

None of it.

For me, it remains one of the greatest acts of political sabotage – (Neglect? Carelessness? Stupidity? There’s no good way to spin it) – of my lifetime. And now he has the gall to knock at Number Ten’s door on the back of the votes of the very generation whose future he has betrayed.
Corbyn Mk I rating 0/10   Corbyn Mk II rating 0/10

…

A quick tot-up gives a total score of 25/100 for Corbo one-point-zero, up to 51.5/100 for the election reboot. So, if The Inquisition will allow me, I’ll settle for saying that the New Model Corbyn is a hundred per cent better than the prototype sent to What Party Leader last year. And yes it absolutely did confound expectations. I stand amazed, and even corrected. But that’s starting from a low base, and frankly who knows what would have happened had Theresa May not decided to do a big greasy shit over her core demographic. Let’s hope that Jeremy Corbyn Mark III will take a little less than 35 years to hit the market.

If all of this seems a little lemon lipped, rest assured…

Lemon Marmoset

…I love lemons, and on Friday morning I woke up thinking that, messy, chaotic, and frightening though the next few years may be, democracy had triumphed and we had got a result that precisely reflected the wishes of the country. Jeremy Corbyn hadn’t yet earned the nation’s trust, but Theresa May had lost it; a majority preferred the Tory brand despite her shortcomings and chose that, with May stripped of her power and the worst excesses of the manifesto neutralised by the lack of parliamentary numbers. With regard to Brexit, it’s not completely out of the ball park to suggest that this result is the country’s way of telling the politicians to work together to sort this out. A wise Mrs May would convene a cross party negotiating team to deal with the most crucial realignment of the UK’s position in the world since World War 2. And as for Mr C himself… well, as far as I can see he got the perfect result. No one loves a heroic defeat more than a British lefty (such noble defeatism doesn’t exist in the Tory canon) – and this way he gets all the plaudits, he gets his PLP on side, and he doesn’t have to deliver on a single manifesto pledge or disappoint anyone.

And if he really is finding some smarts down the back of the Labour sofa, he will ask himself the very tough questions about why he lost this time, and what he needs to do to win the next. If he does he will be unstoppable.

And if you think that all of this is being wise after the event, please may I indulge myself (when did I do anything else?) by sharing a Facebook post I wrote on 18th April, the day Theresa May announced her ill fated election and the polls were fifteen to twenty per cent in her favour…

Screen Shot 2017-06-12 at 14.51.55

I was wrong about the LibDems and I didn’t factor in the NI parties, but otherwise…

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

Archives

  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • August 2018
  • June 2018
  • March 2018
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • November 2016
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • July 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014

Recommended Links

  • (Dementia Just Ain't) Sexy Writer Ming Ho shares her thoughts on caring for people with dementia in this informed and well written blog.
  • A Sandpit Baby My niece, Rebecca, who lives in Dubai, recently became a mother for the first time. This is her witty and warm account of motherhood in the UAE and on her assorted voyages.
  • Deadlines & Diamonds Excellent blog, mainly about the trials and tribulations of TV writing by my good friend and successful UK TV scribe, Lisa Holdsworth
  • FrozenWarning This blogger describes herself as an ‘evidence based fact ninja’ – so I like her already!
  • Jacqueline Saphra My old university friend & housemate Jacqueline Saphra is now a poet. This is her thoughtful blog.
  • KerryMaddenSabbatical A beautifully written blog by an old university mucker.
  • Politics From The Flatlands Lincolnshire based playwright, teacher, and all round rationalist, Richard Vergette explores politics and other things.
  • Richard Stott – Actor My friend Richard Stott writes frankly about the life of an aspiring young actor.
  • The Idge Of Reason I don’t know who this blogger is, and some of the writing is a little dry (I like jokes and pictures because I’m simple!), but it’s intelligent thoughtful stuff.
  • This Is My Think Spot My niece Kate Reader gave me a kick up the bum to start blogging. This is hers…

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • NinjaMarmoset
    • Join 1,406 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • NinjaMarmoset
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: